


How The World Is Made

by apfelgranate



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelgranate/pseuds/apfelgranate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a thousand ways, the Evanuris bend the world to their will. Ghilan’nain is the only one who bends life itself to her will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How The World Is Made

**Author's Note:**

> A [tag ramble](http://notenoughdragons.tumblr.com/post/142978847251/the-skin-that-stalks-notes-on-methods-of) turned drabble. Ish.

This is how Ghilan’nain works: methodical, intent, ruthless, delighted.

The beauty of her craft is everything; the pride, the joy in seeing her efforts come to fruition. She manipulates tissue and enchantments like others manipulate needle and thread. She shapes things that do not quite live but breathe regardless, that mold to body and limbs like an additional skin and reach tendrils within to touch the wearer’s heart. She rears flowers that hold entire cities, their vines and shoots and petals twisted and crushed into diamond strength, high into the sky as any mountain. She builds halls that sing and whisper of memories long-past, hewn from stone that is forever warm, and, under the right touch, yields.

(It is in everything she creates: if not the spark of life, then the shadow of it.)

June has fed his soul into ironbark and Elgar’nan commands the sun, Sylaise carries fire in her breast and calls it forth with nothing but a thought, Mythal has slid into the hearts of her people and they fall to her word.

In a thousand ways, the Evanuris bend the world to their will. But Ghilan’nain…

Ghilan’nain is the only one who bends life itself to her will.

She forges creatures that fill the sky, that roam the earth and let it tremble beneath their steps, creatures that linger huge and silent below the waves. She takes living things apart and divides them into their parts, weaves spells upon spells into them and fuses them anew in a collision of galaxies. She breaks bones and rends flesh and boils blood, and fans the spark of life into a roaring sun.

Why did you do it? the wolf asks her once.

I’ve done many things.

Six red eyes gaze at her. Why did you drain your servants dry and fill their veins with liquid fire?

And she laughs; she touches his cheek to turn his head so his gaze falls upon the first of her youngest creations.

(Not the first to be created, and not the first born from a womb instead of blood and magic, either. The first to survive to become—)

The first is tall; she towers above goddess and god, her horns stretch even further into the sky. Her dark, gold-flecked skin and scales, her claws, her black eyes. The first is no elf. No dragon, either, but something—else.

Look, Ghilan’nain whispers. I gave the divine a new shape. A creature to rival Mythal’s fiercest emissaries. Are they not beautiful?

The wolf smiles. Ghilan’nain radiates pride like a beacon; it shines on her creations like a benevolent, incandescent sun.

They are, he agrees. Is that the reason then; because they are beautiful?

Yes.

Six red eyes blink. Not the only reason, is it.

No.

The wolf knows Ghilan’nain. He knows how she works: methodical, intent, ruthless, delighted. She breaks bones and rends flesh and boils blood. She takes living things apart and divides them into their parts, weaves spells upon spells into them and fuses them anew in a collision of galaxies. And that…

That is how the world is made: with stars crashing into one another.

Why did you do it, Ghilan’nain?

Because they are beautiful. Because I wanted to. Because I _could_.


End file.
